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Nevermind building a better mousetrap, the real money is in toilets
By dwray in The nature of things
August 15, 2011

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No, seriously. After many moons where toilet technology has rested at a comfortable standstill, some enterprising researchers are working to see if they can update the toilet system.

Once upon a time, way back in the days before plumbing and sewer systems, toilets were a kind of low-rent affair. You know the Founding Fathers must have made tons of jokes about ye old chamber pot. Back in the really old days, castle-dwelling types could make use of a style of toilet that was just a hole jutting out over a river. Outhouses were a similarly classy affair (if you're fuzzy, Jeff Bridges spent a lot of time proclaiming one was occupied toward the beginning of "True Grit") But I digress.

Since the advent of the modern toilet, there hasn't been much in the way of changes - aside from that no-touch flush thing, which is pretty cool - but the times they are a changin'.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is sponsoring the "Reinvent the Toilet" competition. Researchers at eight different universities are all working to build a better toilet. Whoever actually wins will get $3 million.

I admit I may have snorted a bit - a sort of goat-with-a-head-cold sound - when I first read about this, but it turns out toilets are something that could actually use a little updating. The ceramic thrones are key in preventing the spread of disease, but it's hard to keep a toilet around without a sewer system to hook it up to. Besides, water is quickly becoming an issue we all need to, you know, pay attention to, so a more efficient toilet ain't a bad idea. Besides, whoever wins will be a toilet millionaire. A millionaire because he or she put his mind in the toilet. What's not to love?

You can read all about it here.